


Teo Torriatte

by Broken_Clover



Category: Guilty Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Copious Amount of Queen References, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Other, Pre-Canon, Terminal Illnesses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 02:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17654693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Broken_Clover/pseuds/Broken_Clover
Summary: Asuka R. Kreutz has made many mistakes. Now he has to make a choice.





	Teo Torriatte

_“A built-in remedy_  
_For Kruschev and Kennedy,_  
_At anytime an invitation_  
_You can’t decline_

_Caviar and cigarette_  
_Well-versed in etiquette,_  
_Extraordinarily nice~_

_She’s a Killer Queen,_  
_Gunpowder, gelatin,_  
_Dynamite with a laser beam~”_

In between files and data, Asuka makes a mental note to find a new record soon. He can’t imagine how worn down the old one has become, and he fears that if he has to listen to the same 11 songs any more, he’s going to go absolutely insane. Even if ‘Stone Cold Crazy’ _was_ a remarkably cathartic tune.

He slumped back in his chair, hearing the ancient springs moan weakly as they were forced to move. He would have liked to replace most of the furniture after so long, but it was enough of a struggle just to keep the lab open anymore.

Well, he supposed, that was nothing new. He could almost hear the sarcastic quip that Frederick would have given him for saying that. Despite all their aspirations, this had been, at its core, a passion project between three grad students, constantly dragging by on paltry grant money and unfettered hope. It was something they tended to forget, in the midst of it all.

For a brief moment, his eyes scanned the stack of half-finished bills. Even with his best planning, he knew that they could only scrape out another month or two on their dwindling funds. Asuka was a genius, not a miracle worker, and this was far from the only concern he had. It still remained one of the more pressing, however, and it loomed over him, no matter how hard he tried to forget it for even a moment.

“Heh. I guess you were right, Aria. People might be fallible, but you can always rely on taxes.”

His own remark was muffled in the tiny room full of paper and machinery. Asuka didn’t even laugh.

“There really isn’t a better way to say it. We’re running out of time and options. We’ve hit the end of the line, guys. It’s over.”

They were out of options, he said, but one was never truly out of options. There was always a final decision to make. In the corner of the room, half-hidden under more paperwork, Asuka could see the last resort waiting for him, taunting him. 

To the left, the cable powering the cryogenic chamber. 

To the right, the emergency kill switch that would open every door from the study chamber to the nearest exit.

Turning off either would massively reduce the monthly payments. He would have more than enough time to try and find a way to keep the lab running.

All he had to do was pick a friend to murder.

The cryo-chamber began whirring again, as if trying to goad him. The left said to him, ‘choose me, I can still be saved.’ The right replied, ‘choose me, I’m still alive.’

It was the same conundrum that Asuka had been stuck in for almost two months now. Even if his decisions had been impulsive and reckless, he wasn’t sure if he’d make any different choices if given a second chance. For as brief as it was, Asuka wasn’t alone, for whatever that meant.

He reached over to flip the switch on the recorder. “Dr. Asuka R. Kreutz, day 834 of the Gear Project.” Dull ruby eyes stared out blankly. “No changes to record. Resources continue to decline. And If I have to listen to Sheer Heart Attack one more time, I fear I’m finally going to snap.”

For the briefest of moments, he stared ruefully at the record player’s off switch. “Unfortunately, I know it’s the only thing I have that can keep him consistently relaxed. With all the variables in play, I can’t risk having him become agitated. He’s hard enough to control. The closest I can manage is just keeping him calm.”

Asuka let out another sigh, flipping the recorder off. “...What have I done to you?”

Frederick circled the room again, serpentine yellow eyes darting from the quietly turning phonograph to the one-way glass. If Asuka didn’t know any better, he’d say that those eyes were looking directly at him.

From a scientific standpoint, the sight before him was nothing short of beautiful. All lean muscle, powerful limbs, shining scales. It would have been so much more beautiful and far less painful if he wasn’t used to seeing a human being standing in the place of a monster.

The screams still rang in his head whenever he managed to get a moment’s rest. He didn’t know how he’d ever been able to look at the sight of one of his closest friends, tied down to a table against his will, with syringes and tubes of chemicals shoved into him as he screamed and writhed and begged for it all to end with anything other than disgust and pure terror. Yet, he had been the one to do it. He’d been the one to spike Frederick’s drink, to restrain him while he was unconscious, and use him as a test subject. There was nobody to blame for the sight before him but himself.

The things that the Gear cells had made was so far from human, Asuka couldn’t tell how much of Frederick was still hidden away in its brain. There had to be something there. He’d swiped the LP from his coworker’s locker out of desperation, desperation to find some way to keep the thing from trying to bash its way out of the test room. For all of his experimentation, Frederick still recognized his favorite music, and was content to merely prowl and circle as long as the disc sat on the record player.

Yet, that was the only sign he’d gotten. Frederick never gave any indication that he recognized him, or the lab that they had all spent countless hours in together. He never spoke, only growling and snarling when his continuous pacing was interrupted for a meal, or when the record needle was moved to start the LP over again. There hadn’t been a single coherent word- although, if he was still capable of speaking, he wasn’t sure if Frederick would have any interest in talking to him.

Asuka wouldn’t have blamed him if it were true.

He’d destroyed the Gear Cells. All of the work he’d done, and all the notes on how to make them, up in flames. He knew now that he’d been idealistic. Even if the ones he used had been mere prototypes. If there was even the vaguest possibility of anything like that happening to anyone else, then he wasn’t going to let them fall into the hands of others. The prospect was inhumane. What sort of horrors could he cause if he let them be used? 

Aria, on the other hand, was a far quieter presence, but equally tenuous. Cryogenics were never a finalized technology, and most of the machine’s components had been welded together with Asuka’s own hands. The process was performed by a menagerie of chemicals, meticulously balanced and regulated to keep the figure inside not frozen in time, but kept in a state of delay. The disease still coursed through her body, but was dragged down to a sluggish spread, controllable as long as she stayed inside of the machine.

She too hadn’t gone into the chamber willingly. Though in Aria’s case, Asuka had chosen it as a last resort. Her body was failing her as the disease progressed into something that wasn’t possible to recover from, even if there was a miracle. It had taken a great toll on her, and she’d been forced to spend the last two weeks hospitalized, barely strong enough to stand up and walk.

It had been easy to take a dying person from the hospital. There was nothing to be gained from keeping a dying patient around and waiting for their time to end. Nobody had even given him a second glance when he pulled Aria from her bed, still in a blissful, morphine-laden sleep, and carried her out.

Choosing Aria would be the easier and more painless option. He could unplug the machine, let her live out the final few days however she wanted. Or he could end it all right there, grab a syringe full of enough relaxants to put her to sleep forever- and yet, she was still the one that could be saved. Maybe if he kept her around for just a bit more time, they could find a proper cure. She’d be able to live out her full life as she wanted.

The thought of letting Frederick run free, though, was more painful to consider. He’d thought about taking the Black-Tech luger stashed under the desk and putting him down the most painless way he could manage, yet Asuka knew that he could never be fast enough. Alternatively, even if drugs did affect Gear cells, he wasn’t sure if Frederick would be willing to eat tampered food. If he let Frederick out, he’d be releasing an apex predator into a world that he didn’t understand and that didn’t understand him. At best, he’d starve. At worst, he’d be gunned down like an animal, body dragged off to be dissected and stripped into each individual component as people tried to figure out what made him tick.

_“Think I'll stay around, around, around, around~_

_Down in the city just-a you and me_

_Aw yeah!~”_

Asuka was snapped from his thoughts at the sound of the record crackling, the last song petering out and going silent. 

Not a moment later, it was interrupted by a low, irate snarl. Frederick had halted his circling, glaring at the one-way window with slanted eyes. The scientist hurried to his feet, through the thin path that lead to the record player.

When he pulled the record off, there was just a slight bit of too much pressure. He paid it no mind as he flipped it over and moved the needle to the outer rim, only to be met with a familiar high-pitched cry that proceeded to skip and stutter and repeat itself.

Puzzled, and feeling an uncomfortable flutter in his chest, Asuka pulled the needle back off and gave the disc a better look. He’d been too rough on the vinyl, and the side had obtained a little scratch, just by the edge.

“Oh…” His eyes went wide. “Oh, no, no, no-”

Frederick was growing more impatient by the second. He slunk closer to the glass, growling. Asuka tried not to look at the creature’s claws, which had left many impressive scars in the metal door and wound do an even more impressive amount of damage to his human flesh in retaliation for interrupting his beloved music.

The trip back to his desk was infinitely shorter, even as he tried to gently cradle the disc and keep it from damaging further. Frederick’s snarling was growing far too loud and close, but the scientist tried to keep himself calm as he fumbled for a scalpel. It was difficult to keep a steady hand, and when he glanced up again, he found himself face-to-face with glowing yellow eyes, sitting just on the other side of the glass.

From so close, it barely seemed like an obstacle for something with three-inch claws.

“...It's so easy, but I can't do it~”

The creature’s odd horns twitched slightly, confused by the new sound. Asuka knew that he was nowhere near the same pitch or tone as the singer, and with far less skill and talent, but it was the first thing he thought of as a last resort.

“So risky, but I gotta chance it,  
It’s so funny, there’s nothing to laugh about-”

He tried not to shriek as a large paw placed itself against the window. Frederick tilted his head momentarily, then turned and padded off.

“My money, that’s all you want to talk about~”

It was almost too hard not to cry in relief. It seemed that week after week of listening to the same songs, he was able to put it to good use.

“I can see what you want me to be,  
But I’m no fool~”

He recalled some vinyl-care notes Frederick had given him way back when he was trying to instill his musical tastes in his coworkers (Asuka still preferred his orchestral, thank you very much). It was almost a miracle that he’d been able to remember them after so long. He pressed the flat end of the scalpel against the scratch, gently nudging the perforated line back into a smooth black lump.

Those eerie yellow eyes watched him as he inched across the room, remaining just placated enough as the music was briefly replaced with a different singer. The noise sounded slightly off-pitch for a brief second, before the record began playing again.

Frederick wandered to the far side of the room, curling up like a cat. Asuka hadn’t been heartless. The corner had an old, soft mattress dragged over as a comfy place to sleep. While grabbing the record, he’d swiped a few articles of the man’s clothing- in his current state, Frederick never wore them, but he hoped that the sight and scent of them served as some sort of comfort from their place as makeshift blankets. Then again, based on the heat signatures he’d charted, the creature he had made maintained an internal body temperature of over 200 degrees, so he didn’t need much to keep himself warm.

In a brief, despondent moment, Asuka asked himself what he was going to do with their meager possessions when the time came. In a way, he’d gotten lucky with the companions that he’d decided to play god with. Aria’s parents had passed years back, and Frederick hadn’t spoken a word to his in over a decade after they tossed him out on the street. There was nobody banging on the lab door- except for the landlord looking for his monthly payments. Nobody tearfully asking where their children had vanished to.

In that way, he mused, they were the same. Strange as it was, the three of them did share a lot in common. A love and passion for science and learning, bright hopes for the future, and nobody else to turn to but each other. 

Asuka didn’t think about his family much anymore. The memories were still clear and lucid, but he preferred not to entertain them. A first-generation biracial immigrant bearing neither half’s features, with his bone-white hair and blood-colored eyes. Growing up in a tiny apartment with a father who uttered more strained German curses than ‘I love yous’ and a mother who drowned herself to death on sake a week before his fourteenth birthday. Strange as it seemed, he managed to find it comical sometimes.

Perhaps it was love, then, that drove him to this. Asuka never had any friends until them, always too shy or awkward to manage such a thing. Nobody who cared whether he lived or died. In the end, maybe he just wanted to live out his life with the two people who made his existence worth a damn.

_“~So dear friends, your love is gone…”_

The soft voice and piano crooned out into the cluttered office. Frederick had never liked this one as much, always said it was too depressing for him. Aria, for as little of a rock fan as she was, had adored it, calling the tune ‘soothing.’ After listening to it so many times, Asuka felt somewhere in between.

In spite of himself, in spite of all the time that had passed, he slumped over on his desk, letting the tears run freely from his eyes.

_“Only tears to dwell upon,_  
_I dare not say as the wind must blow,_  
_So a love is lost, a love is won~”_

Asuka turned to look up at the window of the cryogenic chamber, Aria’s face still sleeping serenely behind it.

He turned to look at Frederick, curled up in the corner. The inhuman figure and monstrous features seemed far less threatening as he yawned, glowing eyes fluttering shut with a tranquil little hum.

_“Go to sleep and dream again~”_

One final time, Asuka stood up. He approached the safe built into the wall. He twiddled in the password- all three of their birthdays in numerical order- and tried not to sneeze from the disturbed dust as the metal creaked open.

_“Soon your hope will rise, and then~”_

The once-precious lab notes that they had all slaved over and spent countless hours detailing were tossed to the floor like trash. They were all meaningless now. 

In the back of the vault, sat a final vial. A failsafe. The only unused Gear Cells left in existence, and a syringe.

_“From all this gloom~”_

Asuka pulled back his labcoat sleeve, and grabbed a broken rubber band off of the desk. When he finished tying it around so tightly that the violet veins struggled and swelled, he plunged the syringe into the vial and withdrew half.

_“Life can start anew~”_

He sucked in a pained breath as the needle pierced into his arm. He could feel the substance inside burning as it squirmed out into his bloodstream. He had no hesitation in screaming in agony, but he kept his arms stiff until the container was empty.

Asuka slumped to the ground, panting and listening to the steadily-growing buzz of something that was going to remake him from the inside-out. With what little strength he had, he latched one hand on the chamber’s power cable, and the other on the failsafe switch.

_“And there’ll be no crying soon~”_

And Asuka decided.

++++++

“Kreutz! Kreutz, you bastard, open this door!”

A thick fist slammed into the metal. He’d spent far too long letting these little scientist kids tinker away in their lab. If he wasn’t going to pay to use the space, they sure as hell weren’t going to be left to do as they pleased.

“I gave you a chance, Kreutz. I own the damn place, don’t think you can lock me out.”

The master key easily undid the lock and deadbolt. To the man’s dismay, the lab beyond was practically in ruin, stacked high with scattered papers and dusty machinery.

“What in the hell…?”

The place practically looked abandoned, based on the dust. But based on the ajar safe and the bizarre mechanical something that dominated one corner of the room, sitting dormant and dull with the lights switched off and the chamber empty, it almost looked like the place was robbed.

For a moment, he let concern slip into his voice. “Kreutz?”

The lightbulbs had been entirely burnt out when he moved to switch the overhead on. Grumbling in annoyance, he retrieved a penlight to get a better look at what couldn’t be made out from the semicircle of light that the door let in from the hallway.

There was a desk, in an equal state of disarray, positioned to face a cracked, grubby pane of glass. Through the muck, he could almost swear that there was something... _glowing_ on the other side.

“...This’d better not be some prank, Asuka.”

He moved to hit the button to open the sliding door to the other half of the room, only to find it already open. He was starting to seriously consider a robbery, with how the door appeared to have been wrenched open by force. Whoever it was, they had to have been wickedly strong, based on the gouges left in the metal.

“Shit...this is gonna cost a fuckin’ fortune to replace…”

The small light swept over the whitewashed walls, now stained with something he couldn’t name form a glance. After a bit of searching, it eventually settled itself over the strange glowing thing he’d seen.

The flashlight fell to the floor, and began flickering on impact.

 _“Oh dear god.”_ His voice trembled. “What the _fuck_ -”

Three odd figures sat huddled against the wall, so close together that it was hard at first to find where each one started and ended.

The thing on the left was something like a robot, sleek and white and metallic with a pointed, whiplike tail that swished back and forth. A wild mane of red hair swept down its shoulders, the one single feature that could have conceivably been called ‘human.’

The one on the right, the glowing thing, called to mind a dragon. Flaming horns sprouted from its head, face near-featureless aside from a pair of glowing yellow eyes. Each limb was heavily muscled and glimmering with shining scales, gradually ending in a set of claws that looked like they could rip right through a ship’s hull.

The one in the center was the hardest to define. Of the three, it looked the most human, at least in shape. He couldn’t make out any of its features. Everything had been hidden by what looked like elaborately-decorated white fabric, pooled into a heap on the floor. A pair of scarf-like tendrils moved on their own volition, gently petting the other two creatures as though they were beloved pets.

He screamed. The trio instantly snapped out of their seemingly-serene moment and all turned their attention to the source of the noise. The robot-thing issued a mechanical screech, the glowing one accompanying with a snarling bay, and they both lunged.

The scattered papers were slippery underfoot. Without thinking, he crashed to the ground. When he next opened his eyes, he found himself staring up at two pairs of luminescent eyes, and a hooded face.

“P-please…” There was nowhere to run. No way to escape. He could feel terrified tears running down his cheeks. “D-don’t-”

The humanoid figure crouched down above him. A scarf-tendril swept up with meticulous carefulness, moving to wipe away the tears on his face. From the closer view, he could see that there was nothing behind the white hood. Nothing but an empty void.

“Shh...no crying.”

The voice sounded kind. But he couldn’t dwell on it for more than a moment, when two sets of razor-sharp claws and teeth sank into his body.


End file.
